Apostle Paul's Conception of the Last Supper

As we celebrate the resurrection of Christ Jesus, many of us are reminded of the historical event of the Last Meal Jesus shared with His disciples. It has since become for Christianity a sacrament; an outward and visible sign of an inward and invisible grace.

If we stop to think about it, we realize that we indeed do live by signs. A frown or a smile is a sign of the internal, unseen mind and mood. A wedding ring is an outward sign of sacred vows. Earth and sky are the hieroglyphs of a Presence. Reduce Christianity to its ultimate simplicities, and it still has its signs: the silence, the handshake, the kiss of peace, the vocabulary. This sign , the Sacrament of Eucharist however, is without equal.

There is not anything really extraordinary about simple bread and wine. Bread that comes of seed that died to live and wine wrung from the wine press. But what elevates the bread and wine out of the realm of the ordinary is its relevance to our faith and to all human life. The bread and wine are portals through which Christ comes, and any penitent soul may enter the banquet hall of the Redeemer and dine with Him at His table. One glimmer of light from this upper room, where a family meal was being held, shines into the dining room of every Christian home. It illuminates possibilities in even the lowliest conditions of life. 

It is interesting, then, that apart from Paul and the Synoptic Gospels, the rest of the New Testament is virtually silent on the subject of the Lord’s Supper. There is no teaching on it anywhere else, although there may be allusions to it in books such as John and Jude. And if there had not been problems at Corinth, one of which was disorders at the Lord’s Supper, Paul himself might never have mentioned the subject. Yet, we do not want to read too much into the silence as the silence itself could mean that the Lord’s Supper was so well-known, and so much a part of faith that mention of it was totally unnecessary except where disorders called for clarification.

The Lord’s Supper has been celebrated continuously by the Church from the time of Jesus Christ to the present day. As far as we know, Paul’s account of it is the first written description. He states that he “received it from the Lord” which may mean that he derived the knowledge of the institution of the Lord’s Supper and its real meaning in the same way he had earlier received the substance of the Gospel: “I did not receive it from any man, nor was I taught it; rather, I received it by revelation from Jesus Christ” (Galatians 1:12).

Paul’s understanding of the Lord’s Supper, therefore, is in essence identical with the traditional understanding of it, but the disorders at the Lord’s Table in Corinth gave the apostle reason to provide teaching on the subject which appears nowhere else in the New Testament and for which we are eternally grateful.

There is one command given by our Lord acknowledged by Paul (and Luke) that does not appear in either Mark or Matthew; “Do this is remembrance of me.” Paul therefore, understands that the purpose of the Lord’s Supper is to commemorate the death of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, and that this purpose originated with the Lord Himself. Just as the Passover was basically a remembrance celebration calling to mind the mercy and greatness of God in delivering His people from Egypt, so the Lord’s Supper is designed to constantly remind the Christian of God’s greatest act, that of deliverance from sin through the death of Christ. Thus, as we thank God for His many blessings, we remember to thank Him most of all for His sending His only begotten Son to save a dying humanity.

Actually, the Biblical idea of “remembering” is more profound than our modern day conception of it. It meant for the Biblical writer more than simply having an idea about something that happened in the past. It involved action, a physical response to the process of remembering. For when the dying thief asked the Savior to “remember” him, he meant more than just “keep me in Your mind.” He meant, save me, have mercy on me! There was, then, this closeness of relation between thought and action. So when the Jews celebrated the Passover, they did more than just think about what happened to their forefathers. They in a real sense reenacted that event and themselves participated in the Exodus. They were at one with their past.

There may be this same dimension in the word “remembrance” as Paul used it in 1 Corinthians 11. When Christians partakes of the Lord’s Supper, we not only have an “idea” in our minds about a past event, but in a deeper sense, we recall that event in such vivid details that it is powerfully present. In the Lord’s Supper, then (and uniquely in Lord’s Supper), the death of Christ is made so graphic that it is as if we ourselves are sitting around the table with the disciples in His presence.

Paul also understood the Lord’s Supper to be a proclamation: “For whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes” (1 Corinthians 11:26). Hence, it seems that its action is directed horizontally toward man rather than vertically toward heaven. In performing the rite the celebrant proclaims to all humanity the victory resulting from the Lord’s death. The Supper therefore becomes the Gospel, a “visible word” (verbum visibile ), and of the word as an “audible sacrament” (sacramentum audible ) as Augustine spoke of it.

This idea of the Lord’s Supper being Gospel is helpful in understanding the Lord’s presence in the Supper. In the New Testament, proclamation has the tone of an event. The “word” is never merely something intended for the intellect. Christ Himself comes in the Word: “He who listens to you listens to me;” (Luke 10:16). Likewise, Christ comes in the Supper. His presence is brought about not by liturgically correct administration of the sacrament. It is an encounter, Christ’s encounter with His Church, not the distribution of material substance that is relevant to faith.

“Is not the cup of thanksgiving for which we give thanks a participation in the blood of Christ? And is not the bread that we break a participation in the body of Christ?” These words of Paul as expressed in 1 Corinthians 10:16, suggest Paul may have understood the cup and bread to symbolize the Christian’s participation in the very death of Christ. Perhaps he was attempting to convey to us that the Redeemer and the redeemed are so intimately connected with each other that what happened to the Redeemer happened also to the redeemed. So, if Christ died, the Christian died also, and partaking of the Lord’s Supper symbolizes this participation in the body and blood of our Savior. This description of the Supper is Paul’s way of restating what Christ already had said:

“I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world…Jesus said to them, “I tell you the truth, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you” (John 6:51, 53).

The Lord’s Supper, though of great importance to Paul, is not all-important. There are no magical qualities to it. It has no more power to communicate and maintain life than did the spiritual food and drink provided Israel in the wilderness. The importance of the Supper exists solely in the Person it points to, and whose redemptive acts it attests.

We are invited to Jesus’ table. He instituted the feast. He offered the priceless gifts. Originally Jesus presided as host, and His disciples gathered about the table as His guests. This is the “table of believers,” and ministers are His servants as their name implies, ministering His gifts of bread and wine.

Who is invited? Anyone our Lord would invite. Who should be excluded? Those whom, in reverent love, our Lord would exclude: Jesus would never make casualness, let alone a mockery, of that great feast. It is His table because He alone can give the gifts of redemption. Only the incarnate Lord can identify Himself with all our human need. Only He can forgive, for forgiveness is of God. Only He can offer the perfect sacrifice. It is His table: we receive by His pierced hands the gift of grace.

But as we sit with the disciples at the table, we hear some disturbing words of Jesus, “I tell you the truth, one of you will betray me too” and one by one we asked, “Lord, is it I?”

Each one of us must put that question to ourselves, “Is it I?” The word “betray” is an ugly word because it is an ugly act. Anyone who has ever been betrayed knows the profound emotional and spiritual suffering that it causes. Though most of us can probably refute charges of treason, life’s tests rarely come in such explicit manners. They tend to creep upon us in unnoticed choices. Before we realize it we come to the edge, are over the edge, of some kind of betrayal. All Christians have “dipped into the dish” with Jesus; “Is it I?”

We betray our Master when we allow our devotion to erode without renewal.

Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,

Creeps in this petty pace from day to day

To the last syllable of recorded time,

And all our yesterdays have lighted fools

The way to dusty death”

~ William Shakespeare

We betray Him when we allow ourselves to adopt the Pharisaic and Sadducee attitude; when we move in circles where our Lord is not welcome, where we cannot acknowledge our faith or must disregard it entirely. Breathing that atmosphere, we may come to have our view of Jesus subtly merge with that of the powerful secular “authorities.”

We betray our Savior when we try to make Him fit into our way of life and thought, instead of changing our thoughts and ways to fit His. The familiar work of Whistler is in point. When he was told by one of his clients that a certain picture would not fit into his room, Whistler replied: “Man you cannot make the picture fit the room. You must make the room fit the picture.”

Jesus is not to be condensed to fit into our life; we are to be increased to fit into His. We must not change His Word to fit our understanding, but must adjust our understanding to fit His Word. Amen.

“The Lord Jesus, on the night he was betrayed, took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, ‘This is my body, which is for you; do this in remembrance of me.”

“In the same way, after supper he took the cup, saying, ‘This cup is the new covenant in my blood; do this, whenever you drink it, in remembrance of me.” (1 Corinthians 11:24, 25).